title: Building an educated health informatics workforce--the New Zealand experience.
abstract: New Zealand has a rapidly expanding health information technology (IT) development industry and wide-ranging use of informatics, especially in the primary health sector. The New Zealand government through the National Health IT Board (NHITB) has promised to provide shared care health records of core information for all New Zealanders by 2014. One of the major barriers to improvement in IT use in healthcare is the dearth of trained and interested clinicians, management and technical workforce. Health Informatics New Zealand (HINZ) and the academic community in New Zealand are attempting to remedy this by raising awareness of health informatics at the "grass roots" level of the existing workforce via free "primer" workshops and by developing a sustainable cross-institutional model of educational opportunities. Support from the NHITB has been forthcoming, and the workshops started in early 2013, reaching out to clinical and other staff in post around New Zealand.
authors.affiliation: School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Auckland University of Technology.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Parry
authors.forename: Inga
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Hunter
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Honey
authors.forename: Alec
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Holt
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Day
authors.forename: Ray
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kirk
authors.forename: Rowena
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cullen
mesh_terms: D022126:Access to Information; D033161:Government Regulation; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000193:education*; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D008490:Medical Informatics / Q000193:education*; D009520:New Zealand; D011320:Primary Health Care